I talk about why one should be very wary of people who approve of your vices—they want something from you. You can also watch this on YouTube:
Category: Missing the Mark Podcast
Some Questions About Meaning
A friend, acting out of morbid curiosity, watched a video by Bionic Dance that responded to my video, Life Doesn’t Have the Meaning You Give it, and alerted to me to it having some questions in it which might be interesting to answer. So I watched the video myself, wrote down the interesting questions, and answered them in this video.
I didn’t make a response video to her because—as I said in my video on why I’m not going to respond to her again—she contradicts herself so often that no response is needed; one only needs watch the entirety of her video (and remember what she said in the earlier parts) to see her refute herself. However, I will answer questions which I think can be generally useful regardless of where they came from, and these happened to be fairly well phrased for general use.
You can also watch it on YouTube:
Life Doesn’t Have the Meaning You Give It
In this episode I discuss the idea that “life has the meaning you give it” and how it’s not true. If you prefer, you can watch the video on YouTube:
Good Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People
I talk about why the book How To Win Friends And Influence People is a good book. I highly recommend it. You can also watch this on YouTube if you prefer:
How To Make Friends
Or you can watch the video on YouTube, if you prefer:
How To Recognize Honest Atheists
On the internet one will run across many atheists who are speaking in bad faith. I give a technique for how to tell whether any given atheist is speaking in good faith or in bad faith. Or you can view it on YouTube, if you like:
Historical Fiction w/ Professor Rachel Fulton Brown
Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and I discussed historical fiction and related subjects in this interview which was, by my standards, surprisingly on-topic. (It would generally be considered fairly wide-ranging, I think.) You can also watch it on YouTube if you prefer:
An Alternative to the Burden of Proof
One commonly hears from online atheists that if you don’t accept the principle that the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim, then you have to believe everything that you hear. So I helpfully present an alternative—thinking rationally. You can of course also watch it on YouTube:
A Few Gumballs Short of a Picnic
I got an email from a young man named Ken who asked me about an analogy Matt Dillahunty presents about whether the number of gumballs in a jar is odd or even. I originally did an unscripted answer but a lot of people missed the point so I did a scripted video which should be a lot clearer. You can of course watch it in YouTube:
The Rich Young Man & Who is Rich Today
Some thoughts on the story of the Rich Young Man (from the gospels) as well as what it means for it to be difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven given our modern technological wealth. Or you can watch it on YouTube:
The Marbles of Matt Dillahunty
I got a request to look at an analogy originally presented by Matt Dillahunty, so I explain why it’s a bad analogy. (Oddly, some atheists don’t seem to understand that to call something trivial is to say that it’s true. They seem stuck on the idea I’ve missed the point that reserving judgment is not identical with affirming a negative; which is true but only important in cases where one doesn’t have to act on the truth or falsity of the proposition, which has nothing whatever to do with whether God exists.) There’s a correction or two I should note, such as the original example was gumballs instead of marbles, and in some examples he specifies whole gumballs.
(I’m coming out with a scripted version of this video which will be much tighter, by the way.)
You can of course watch it on YouTube, too:
Atheists Want to Feel Smart?
I’ve heard the explanation that some atheists become atheists because they want to feel smart. That never made much sense to me, but I’ve recently gotten some insight into what it might mean and I present that interpretation of the idea for consideration. You can also watch this on YouTube if you prefer:
Doing the Easy Stuff
A discussion about doing the easy stuff which makes one feel virtuous and the danger of therefore leaving off the harder acts of virtue because we feel like we already put a lot of work into being virtuous. You can watch it on YouTube if you prefer:
Misfortune
Some thoughts on misfortune and the attitudes one can have toward it. Or you can watch it on YouTube:
Atheism Changes Everything
Some thoughts on how atheism is not a free-floating proposition but instead affects every aspect of reality. You can of course watch it on YouTube, too:
No One Believes Their Beliefs
Some considerations about hypocrisy, and how this is a universal human problem in matters both religious and secular. If you prefer, you can watch it on YouTube:
